wish i had make do and mend attitude

I was round at my mums and realised she still has the same biscuit tin from when i was a child, she thinks she has probably had it over 30 years.

My Mil has lots of things that are about 25/30 years old (teapot, kitchen items) so i buy her new ones for xmas etc and she still uses the old ones.

I really wish i had this mentality im constantly replacing things that arent even properly broken or just dont even try and throw it away.

So one of my new years resolutions is to make do and mend more.

We moved into our house less than 2 years ago and the carpet in the hallway was new. Its been peed on a few times and spewed on. My OH was looking at carpets saying how it needs replaced and i was thinking what the hell we havent even properly tried to scrub it or anything so no we are not getting a new one!!

Hopefully i will save some money and appreciate things a bit more.
In our 7 year relationship we have broken 6 laptops and god knows how many mobile phones, i really need to try.

I have that problem too and I too have talked with OH that we have to try and waste less. Be that food or other things. We have been a childless couple so long before we had children that money was never an issue. It is now though. So tightening belts all around.
But apart from that I wish I could knit and sew! I love home made things but I am no good at it at all!

Yes definately, when i look back on how much we wasted before kids i cant believe it. I used to spend about £40 a month just on dvds that id watch once, lots of meals out and holidays.

I think one problem is how easy it is to get money that isnt really yours these days. I suppose back when my mum/grandparents had children it wouldnt have been so easy to get credit cards etc so they would have had to earn the money first and then didnt want to buy unecessary things.

My Mil knits and i love all the things she makes for the kids they dont really sell much things like that in the shops.

Ah see it drives me nuts that our parents dont throw things out, my whole career is based on selecting what needs to be chucked and what needs to be permanently preserved, at home I chuck things out as soon as I can- therapeutic ha!

We always try to fix things before throwing them out. We don't do it to save money necessarily, but it just feels so wasteful to throw something out when it could be easily fixed, or just because we want to upgrade to a newer version of something when there is nothing wrong with the one we already have. This is why we both have older iPhones, because there is nothing functionally wrong with them so we just can't justify spending a ton of money just to keep up with a trend. It is amazing what you can fix with no real handyman knowledge, a quick youtube search will result in multiple videos showing you how to fix anything you could imagine.

We definitely take advamtage of other people's 'trash' as well. We did a big kitchen reno and needed a new stove. We found someone selling a really high end gas stove (retail over $3000) for $200 because it was dirty. All we needed to do was buy some degreaser and spend some time cleaning it and it was good as new. We also got some beautiful Brazilian slate tile for our floors for super cheap from someone who didn't do the math properly and bought way too much for their house! So I guess we appreciate people who like to throw away and replace their items often, we just don't want to be those people! We always find ways to save money and reuse or fix things that we already have, as we would rather spend our money on fun weekends away and vacations overseas.

I have that problem too and I too have talked with OH that we have to try and waste less. Be that food or other things. We have been a childless couple so long before we had children that money was never an issue. It is now though. So tightening belts all around.
But apart from that I wish I could knit and sew! I love home made things but I am no good at it at all!

I learnt to knit from YouTube and sew using trial and error. This year I made as many Xmas presents as possible and found I enjoyed it much more as felt I was giving something I'd put thought into rather than just a quick but gift set type of gift.

I have decided to make as much as possible this year and expand my skills a bit.

I feel like this too. I definitely chuck things out before putting much effort into repairing/upcycling them. I've set myself small goals like checking for upcycling ideas on Pinterest (for example we have an old filing drawer, I searched "upcycle file drawer" on Pinterest and found some useful ideas that I can actually do/will be useful), repairing stuff and then earmarking the money we would have used for a replacement to spend on something else (currently earmarking money for a room re-do for DS) and re purposing anything we can; old wellies for planters for the kids (more fun growing herbs in a wellie than in a pot so it should hold DS's interest better), bottle tops/celephane wrappers/lolly sticks etc for junk modeling, stuff like that.

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